Junkyard treasures

This engine block coffee table was created with an old engine block and pistons. It was created by Clayton Kauth and Micah Laude.
Bert Lehman photo

Clintonville students sell upcycled creations

By Bert Lehman

For the third year in a row, juniors at Clintonville High School have taken items that would have been thrown away, and created something useful out of them.

The “upcycling” project was part of the English 11 class.

“We actually started it on a smaller scale three years ago,” said Lindsay Davis, junior English teacher. “Our whole curriculum for the fourth quarter is environmental studies, what’s going on in the world, garbology.”

Projects are worked on in and out of class.

“We provide a number of days in class when they can work on the projects but most of the building and creation of the product is done outside of school because they have to start a business and put on a presentation,” Davis said. “We do our version of Shark Tank in class where they have to get feedback from students and administrators.

“After that they have to write a formal business plan and there is a lot that they have to include in that. Then they have to create advertising for the fair. They have to create tags for their products and signs to put out during the fair. That is the majority of what is done in class.”

Once again this year, students had their “creations” on display at Clintonville High School prior to the end of the school year. The community was allowed to view the items and bid on them if they wished to buy an item.

Davis said this year’s juniors saw what the fair was like last year, and this year’s projects were more elaborate.

“I think a lot of the students, in walking through the halls last year, it really sparked their ideas to start back then,” Davis said. “Most of them have been planning on what they wanted to do since last year. They put a lot of time into the mental preparation and physical preparation of the products.”

Last year around 50-60 percent of the items received bids and were sold, Davis said. She expected 85-90 percent of the items this year to sell.

She added that she expects the popularity of the project to increase each year.